The Lord of the Rings Online Website announces a head-start program for the new free-to-play version of this MMORPG will commence on September 8 (thanks Acleacius). Here's a bit:

Open to current and former subscribers as well as recent participants in the closed beta, The Lord of the Rings Online™ Head Start begins 09/08/10. Players who join us for this event get exclusive access to play early. The head start allows all participants to fully experience the new game content and features, including the new region of Enedwaith, the new LOTRO store, and the Free-to-Play option, before the general public is admitted on 09/10/10. Reserve your character names on the new servers, play the new content first, or simply get a jump on trying out the latest game features. It all begins on September 8th!

A new Portal 2 trailer from PAX 2010 offers a look at the co-op gameplay from Valve's upcoming platformer sequel shown off at the trade show. The clip runs almost nine minutes, showing off new gameplay mechanics and how cooperative puzzle solving will operate. There's also a ShakyCam trailer on GameVideos showing the game being demoed. Thanks Ant.

Kotaku has some details on how Duke Nukem Forever survived the sacking of its development team to live on as an ongoing project at Gearbox Software. It turns out that in spite of little hope they would be able to release the game due to legal complications, some of the former 3D Realms staff could not let go of the project, and continued development from home: "One of the co-creators of the well-known Duke Nukem character, Allen Blum, was among the 3D Realms developers fired in May of 2009. He was a veteran. 'He couldn't let it go,' Pitchford said. 'I wouldn't either. He decided to keep it going.' So, post 3D Realms, Duke Nukem Forever development continued in the apartments of some of the laid off staff. It became, essentially, a garage game. 'I got wind of it,' Pitchford said. 'I came around and checked things out'." Apparently it was Pitchford's history with Duke, 3D Realms, and Take Two all lead to Gearbox being able to bet on Duke. Pitchford says: "The short story of it is: Because of my history with Duke, because of my relationship with Scott and George, because of the trust and respect that Gearbox and Take Two were able to build through our work together with Borderlands, and through the capabilities that I have built with my team to be able to ship games on these platforms — because of all of these things, I was in a spot that, if I took a bet and got in there and put myself in the line of fire in the middle of this thing, I knew that I could bring all these pieces together and that I could save Duke." On a related note, there are some DNF gameplay screenshots on Computer and Video Games.

Steam News announces a patch for Left 4 Dead is now automatically available with three bug fixes for the co-op zombie shooter. They also announce a new automatic patch for Left 4 Dead 2, which address a couple of bugs in the sequel, while also adding Hard Eight at this week's developer's choice mutation.

Telltale Games announces The Great Adventure Bundle 2010, a collection of six adventure games on sale for $19.99 USD, with proceeds from the sale going to charity. Games in the bundle include The Whispered World, Jack Keane, the King's Quest Collection, and Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode 1, with Telltale saying the other two titles, Puzzle Agent and Sam & Max: Beyond Time and Space, "will unlock as more people purchase the bundle." The charities to benefit from this include Child's Play, The World Wildlife Fund, The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, Nyota e.V., and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Here is Valve's list of the top 10 bestselling titles on Steam for the week:

1. Worms Reloaded
2. Mafia II
3. Company of Heroes Complete Pack
4. Battlefield: Bad Company 2
5. Sid Meier's Civilization V
6. Mount & Blade: Warband
7. Mafia II: Digital Deluxe Edition
8. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
9. R.U.S.E.
10. Left 4 Dead 2

• Dragon Age II on Hooked Gamers.
• Duke Nukem Forever on Examiner.com.
• Dungeons on Hooked Gamers.
• Magicka on Hooked Gamers.

• PS3 hack ban upheld by court as free version released. Thanks Acleacius.
• A closer look at Kinect - Hooked Gamers.
• Earth Defense Force Returns In Insect Armageddon.

Thanks Ant.

• Memristor revolution backed by HP. Thanks Acleacius.
• ImgBurn version 2.5.2.0 is now available.
• iTunes 10 hands-on- snappier performance, questionable UI choices.

Thanks Acleacius.

• UN reveals global disparity in broadband access.
• Craigslist Adult Services Section REMOVED.
• Americans get ultra-cheap broadband in real terms. Thanks El Destiny.

Thanks Ant.

• Game Companies Should Play Fair With P2P. Thanks Slashdot.
• White House Fingers PlayStation As Obesity Culprit.
• What it takes to shut down a botnet. Thanks [H]ard-OCP.
• Nasty Data-Stealing Bug Haunts Internet Explorer 8. Thanks Mike Martinez via Slashdot.
• Facebook Glitch Let Spammer Post to Walls. Thanks [H]ard-OCP.
• Quantum key distribution in superposition of "insecure" and "unneeded".

• Pentagon declined to investigate hundreds of purchases of child pornography. Thanks Acleacius.

• Amnesia: The Dark Descent on Elder Geek and IGN. Thanks joao.
• Mafia II on Hooked Gamers.

• AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition Hexa-Core AM3 Processor on eTeknix.
• Case Appeals AVZ Test Bench on PC Perspective.
• LG GT540 Cell Phone on t-break.
• Patriot 4GB PC3-19200 2400MHz DDR3 RAM on RBMODS.
• Roccat Pyra Wireless and Wired Mice on Hooked Gamers.
• Siig Wireless Multi-Touchpad Mini Keyboard on iGadget Life.

• Fascinating and in-depth Quake 3 analysis. Thanks Ant…
• StarCraft 2 Replay Value…
• GameInformer October Cover Revealed: BioShock Infinite. Covers, actually…
• Retrospective: Titan Quest…

A hearty thank you to Frans for fixing the problems with our Twitter feed caused by their recent switch in authentication methods. This turned out to be a little trickier than it should have due to the way things are handled on our end, rather than theirs, which is why it took so long to clear up. The feed has finally caught up with several days worth of posts, apologies for who spammy that undoubtedly was.

Caught Up Links:	Thanks Ant and Mike Martinez and Acleacius.
Play:	Asteroids. Sieger. Conveyor.
Links:	Portal bookends. Thanks jimnms. Top 18 Cool Coffee Machines. Thanks Neatorama.
Stories:	Vets Get Ecstasy to Treat Their PTSD. UN calls meeting on food price concerns.
Science:	NASA Study Finds Increasing Solar Trend That Can Change Climate. New study weighs in on organic vs. conventional debate. Do our memories get better or worse with age?
Images:	600 Hanna-Barbera Characters In Chronological Order. Thanks Laughing Squid.
Media:	8-bit godzilla squirrel running around with a chainsaw. OMGWTFBBQ?! Epic Animal Dance. Miss Universes are Bad at Sound Effects.
The Funnies:	Dilbert. FoxTrot. UserFriendly.
Follow-up:	Don't let the bed bugs bite. Resignation cake sender has invoice cake delivered to People.com.

Insolvent developer Realtime Worlds has sold in-development MMOG Project: MyWorld to an "anonymous American company," reports Develop. The studio suffered some layoffs related to its crash, but staff was later rehired for Project: MyWorld when it became clear there was interested in buying the IP. Thanks Big Download.

Confirming a rumor on Shacknews, a post on the Elemental Forums by Stardock's Brad Wardell says that the launch failure of Elemental: War of Magic has resulted in layoffs at Stardock, shedding some light on his comment that "the issue here is far far worse than many of you think it is." Word is:

It is true.

Elemental's revenue was anticipated to provide the revenue both for our main games team's next project as well as a second team. Unfortunately, that is unlikely to happen so we've had to start laying people off.

No one is being fired. None of these people did anything wrong. Stardock is a small company and each person here is truly amongst the best and brightest. So you can imagine how much it sucks for all of us to lay off anyone. We haven't had to lay anyone off since our migration from the OS/2 market in 1998. It would be great if we can bring as many of these people back over time if the studio can afford it.

No one involved on the core components of Elemental is affected.

Elemental's rocky launch can be summed up (IMO) as follows: Our QA process was insufficient to handle a brand new platform (Elemental = Kumquat 1.0 versus say Galactic Civilizations II was using Pear which was the same engine, modified, from 1997's Entrepreneur) + my own catastrophic poor judgment in not objectively evaluating the core game play components.

Dins Curse patches page now offers new beta patches for Din's Curse to update Soldak Entertainment's action/RPG to version 1.007. There's a patch for the PC edition and a patch for the Mac edition, and as usual, the beta carries the following warning: "A beta patch means it has been tested, but not enough to be an official patch. So use at your own risk." This page outlines all the changes.

DreamCatcher Games and JoWooD Entertainment say we can expect both PC and Xbox 360 playable demos for ArcaniA: Gothic 4 on September 24. Word is: "The demo comprises the first two hours of the game and shows the beginning tutorial level on Feshyr Island featuring selected quests. Fight off demons, hone your skills and prepare for a bloody battle fueled by vengeance. Get your first taste of ArcaniA: Gothic 4." The game is also now available for preorder, with JoWooD eShop, GamersGate, and Impulse offering 15% discounts, and on Steam where it is bundled with a free copy of Gothic 3.

A new article on the Star Wars: The Old Republic Website offers the space combat trailer released at Gamescom. LucasArts and BioWare now offering some details on how space combat will work in the upcoming MMORPG, discussing mission objectives and exploration.

Chris Taylor's Kings and Castles Video Blog Episode # 30 discusses plans to release the mod tools for Gas Powered Games' upcoming real-time strategy game and other tidbits about the project. Chris also visits an over-caffeinated employee, as well as one with excellent taste in Scotch, spies on some folks, shows off his art skill, and more. No cracked-out mailbag or teleporting this week. Also, happy 44th birthday Chris!

A new TERA trailer is called an extended gameplay trailer, though it looks like the footage is mostly, if not entirely, cinematics. The clip concludes with the depiction of one of the larger boss monsters we've ever seen. Here's the embedded version. Continue here to read the full story.

• PAX 2010- Warren Spector Keynote (Video).
• PAX 2010- The Day Begins - Hardware Canucks.
• Battlefield Community Picture Competition Winner.

• Duke Nukem Forever on Shacknews.
• Portal 2 on Hardware Canucks.

• The Full Opening Cinematic for Disney Epic Mickey.
• Interview: Talking the rebirth of GoldenEye 007.

• Android gains on Apple iPhone in mobile web usage. Thanks Ant via Digg.
• Ubuntu 10.10 beta arrives with new netbook UI.

• AMD developing eight-core Bulldozer-based CPU for 2011 release. Thanks [H]ard-OCP.
• Netgear offers 500Mbps powerline networking via next-gen standard.

• Logitech Revue- Hands-On Impressions.
• Yeah, we'd better cite pajama-wearing bloggers, too.

Thanks Ant.

• WARNING - NOD32 defs update(s) causing problems.
• Wi-Fi War Driving Drone Flying.
• New malware detects browser, shows fake malware warning page. Thanks [H]ard-OCP.

• Texas investigating Google. Don't mess with Texas.
• Nigerian advance-fee scammer gets 12 years. Thanks [H]ard-OCP.
• German court rules against YouTube over copyright. Thanks [H]ard-OCP.
• Google coughs up $8.5 million to settle Buzz privacy suit.
• Jagex Suffers Setback In RuneScape Bot Lawsuit.

• Ancient Trader on Out of Eight.
• Elemental: War of Magic on GameSpot and PC Gamer.
• Victoria II on Armchair General.

• Asus Crosshair IV Formula AM3 Motherboard on eTeknix.com.
• Corsair AX850W PSU on Hardware Secrets.
• ECS P55H-AK LGA1156 Motherboard on MADSHRIMPS.
• Mushkin Callisto Deluxe 60 GB SSD on techPowerUp.
• Palit GTX 460 Sonic Platinum 1GB Graphics Card on PureOC.
• Point of View GeForce GTX 460 Beast Graphics Card on Hardware Heaven.
• Sapphire Radeon HD 5770 Flex Graphics Card on PC Perspective.
• Thermaltake Armor A60 Case on Hardware Secrets.

• The Gaming of Life- Using Game Mechanics for Self Improvement…
• EA’s Need for Speed World to Feature Dolby Axon Chat Technology…

We have some low-key grilling plans for today, since the threatened fallout from Hurricane Earl fizzled out and it's quite pleasant out there. We're just doing some wings and veggies with hamburgers, as my recent burger efforts have been very successful, and my last batch of wings was the best yet, so I am trying to lock-in my technique on each.

Locked-in Links:	Thanks Ant and Mike Martinez and Acleacius.
Play:	Gunbot. eVADE. Lost Head.
Links:	Infrared Nerf autocannon hunts predators, little sisters too. Iraqi Reality TV Show Pranks Celebrities by Planting Fake Bombs in Their Cars. Thanks brother19.
Science:	Giant iceberg enters Nares Strait. Thanks The Flying Penguin.
Media:	Stranbeast. Thanks Devicer. Beware your roommates. Japanese Precision at it's Best/Weirdest.
The Funnies:	The crap we put up with getting on and off an airplane.
Follow-up:	In defense of the 'Happy Days' ' 'Jump the Shark' episode. Thanks Devicer.